On Veterans Day, November 11, 2018, SOFREP published “Five veteran-owned groups making the world a better place,” by Joseph LaFave. The first group on the list was the Five Paragraph Business Plan, Michael Penney’s company.
What the article said
LaFave opened with the reason for the piece. Veterans Day, he wrote, is the one day a year the country should come together to celebrate the work service members do to make the world a better place, and for many veterans that commitment to service continues after they take off the uniform.
His entry on Michael’s company read:
This business is the brainchild of Michael Penney, co-host of the now-on-hiatus podcast Cigars and Sea Stories.
Joseph LaFave, SOFREP, November 2018
LaFave described the Five Paragraph Business Plan as an organization that helps veterans, and civilians, start their own small business of any type. He called Penney, a former Marine and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, a longtime advocate for veteran-owned small businesses, and wrote that the Five Paragraph system brings the theories of military operations planning to the civilian world.
The other four groups on the list:
- Force Blue, founded by Jim Ritterhoff and Rudy Reyes
- Team Rubicon, founded in 2010 by two Marines, including Jake Wood
- Black Rifle Coffee Company
- Final Salute, founded in 2010 by Army veteran Jasmine Boothe to support homeless women veterans and their children
Why it mattered then
The company Michael was listed with says a lot. Team Rubicon and Black Rifle Coffee were national names, and SOFREP is a special operations news site. Leading that list on Veterans Day put the 5 Paragraph method in front of a large veteran readership.
The entry also marks a shift. In 2016 and 2017 he was introduced mainly as a podcaster. Here, Cigars and Sea Stories is “now-on-hiatus,” and the Five Paragraph Business Plan is the headline. The podcast had built his name in the veteran community. The planning system was now the work he was known for.
Looking back
Two names on this list connect to other parts of Michael’s story. Rudy Reyes had been a guest on Cigars and Sea Stories, as HuffPost noted in 2017. Jasmine “Jas” Boothe created the animated comedy Discharged, in which Michael voiced the lead character, Axel.
This post is part of the From the Archive series, which collects Michael’s past media appearances in one place. See the full media archive.
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